Are the Best Organic Standards the Toughest Organic Standards? Why the Activists Got it Wrong
As an aware consumer imploring American farmers to “put away that DDT now,” singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell sang back in the 1970’s, “give me spots on the apples, but leave me the birds and the bees…please.” Once upon a time, when I was an activist and small organic farmer, organic standards were a self-imposed system of […]
Anthroposophy and Ecofascism
In June, 1910, Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, began a speaking tour of Norway with a lecture to a large and attentive audience in Oslo. The lecture series was titled “The Mission of National Souls in Relation to Nordic-Germanic Mythology.” In the Oslo lectures Steiner presented his theory of “folk souls” or “national souls” […]
Anthroposophy and its Defenders
(co-written with Peter Zegers) Reply to Peter Normann Waage, “Humanism and Polemical Populism” “Anthroposophy and Ecofascism” has sparked a debate within Scandinavian humanist circles, with some authors like Peter Normann Waage lining up to defend anthroposophy as a harmless variant of humanism. 1 While we are encouraged by this long overdue debate, we are troubled […]
The Janus Face of Anthroposophy
(co-written with Peter Zegers) Reply to Peter Normann Waage, New Myths About Rudolf Steiner “The Steiner I know,” writes Peter Normann Waage, was the nicest guy you ever met. 1 He couldn’t possibly have said and done all those nasty things Staudenmaier and Zegers say he did. It’s just not like him. Why, look at […]
The Art of Avoiding History
Reply to Göran Fant, “The Art of Turning White into Black” Göran Fant says that he is unable to recognize the portrait of anthroposophy that I painted in my article “Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.” (1) I am not surprised that he found my portrait hard to swallow, since Fant is convinced that anthroposophy is by definition […]
Rudolf Steiner’s threefold commonwealth and alternative economic thought
The economic and political doctrines of German occultist Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of Anthroposophy, are often referred to as ‘social threefolding’ or ‘the threefold commonwealth’. Many of Steiner’s admirers view his social teachings as a promising part of an alternative economic vision, one that can lead us away from both the ravages of untrammeled […]
Social Ecology and The Greening of Our Cities
First published at Toward Freedom, Sept. 2008 Note: This article is from a presentation for Changer le Monde, Un Quartier à la Fois! (Changing the World, One Neighborhood at a Time) conference, Montreal, 5/1/08 Over the past year, we’ve seen an unprecedented rise in awareness of the consequences of potentially catastrophic global climate changes, and […]
Review: Social Ecology and Communalism
Social Ecology and Communalism by Murray Bookchin. Edited by Eirik Eiglad. Oakland, AK Press: 118 pages. ISBN 978-1-904859-49-9 [Available to purchase from AK Press] The American presidential election season has pundits and pollsters proclaiming “change” a primary factor in the minds of many voters. It’s little wonder that this stark period – marked by the […]
Toward a Movement for Peace and Climate Justice
– For In the Middle of a Whirlwind/Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, Summer 2008 (inthemiddleofawhirlwind.info) Complaining about the weather is about as American as apple pie, sitcoms and rock and roll. But while the rest of the world has been noticing for years that our increasingly unstable weather is an initial sign of potentially devastating […]
2008 Presidential Prospects for Progressives: Nader, the Greens, and Building a Movement
While the presidential primary season lurches onward with Obama and Hillary struggling to secure the Democrat nomination, progressives are finding themselves in predicament similar to both 2000 and 2004. Al Gore and John Kerry left a lot to be desired, though Bill Bradley, Dennis Kucinich, and Al Sharpton never gained much traction with their “inside […]
